160 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



First — the cane, in such cases, is enlarged and discolored, and its 

 juices corrupted. No one, who has cultivated melons, cucum- 

 bers, tomatoes, summer squashes, and even occasionally sweet 

 corn, on a large scale for market, during years of severe climatic 

 mid-summer changes, as in 1846, or in permanently cold sum- 

 mers, as in 1848, will be a stranger to closely corresponding 

 indications of morbid condition. Cold wet autumns also pro- 

 duce similar results on sweet corn that had been intended for 

 late market. 



In these cases, melons of all sorts were decayed on the lower 

 side, or exhibited dark hearts. Cucumbers and summer squashes 

 had carious spots on the outside. Tomatoes were covered with 

 brown and black indurations. Sweet corn, in the latter part of 

 the summer, grew and rotted in the husk, even when planted 

 widely apart, with access of air and light. 



Secondly — The sugar cane exhibited mildew about the joints. 

 This is often seen on Indian corn when having been cut up, the 

 autumn is unfavorable for curing it. 



Thirdly — A gummy or waxy exudation is seen about the joints 

 of the sugar cane. When this is considerable in quantity, the 

 produce of sugar is small. So similarly, in morbid years, 

 cucumbers and summer squashes, at mid-summer, and winter 

 squashes when gathered in the autumn, often exhibit gummy 

 concretions over their surfaces. Water melon and musk melon 

 vines, when injured in early or mid-summer by a severe chill, 

 show a black gummy matter standing in drops a few inches from 

 the extremities of such vines as had grown most thriftily. In 

 all these cases such excretions were very offensive to the smell. 

 They all, as also those of the cane, are instances of juices divert- 

 ed from the proper circulation while the plant is in a morbid 

 state, like a vegetable erysipelas. In the case of the sugar cane 

 the rationale of its appearance perhaps is this. Both the sugar 

 cane and Indian corn are constituted with a determination of 

 juices to the bud, in the one case to expand the bud the second 

 year, aiKl in the other to form the ear of the present year. The 

 sugar cane perhaps needs a portion of this gum to protect the' 

 joint and the bud from the severities of the coming winter, but 



